Bedworth Heath Nursery School and Warwickshire Early Years Hub

Attendance

Attendance: 

Attendance at Nursery is not statutory. There is no legal duty for a child to attend. However regular, prompt attendance leads to the greatest benefits in terms of a child’s early learning and development and regular attendance is expected if you take a place at our Nursery School. Each 15 or 30 hour place is funded by the Government. These payments are made to schools on the basis of the number of children attending. Therefore if your child does not attend for an extended period of time, with no reason the money for the place will be deducted from our budget. Financial audits are conducted to check this.

Non Attendance: 

At times children are unwell or cannot attend. If you let us know in advance that your child cannot attend this is known as an ‘authorised absence’. If your child is not brought to Nursery for any other reason than ill-health, you must let us know and this absence will be authorised. We can authorise absence for ‘other reasons’ for example a family holiday because your child is NOT statutory school age. This is NOT the case once your child is 5 years old. Please phone school promptly on these occasions and let staff know why your child will be absent. 

When we do not hear from you we will take the following steps: 

1. On the first day of an unexplained absence a member of the team will contact you by telephone. This will be followed up with further calls until we establish the nature of the absence, during week one. If we cannot make contact with you the following steps will apply.

2. Within the first 2 or 3 days any unexplained absence is further acted upon by the admin team, keyperson or senior leadership team with telephone calls. Calls to members on the contact list will be made. Cross checks with siblings at local schools will be made where appropriate. 

3. If contact cannot be made we will visit the family home. If no contact is made an email will be sent to Warwickshire Early Years Safeguarding Advisor stating that the child is potentially missing in education, email address earlyyearsadvisors@warwickshire.gov.uk. If there are concerns that the child may be at risk of harm, follow safeguarding procedures – contact Warwickshire Children and families Front Door for a consultation, Tel: 01926 414144. This may trigger a Police welfare check. 

4. After a further week of unexplained non-attendance and no contact parents/carers are written to and advised that the nursery place is at risk.

 5. After a further 2 week period the place is removed and the ‘Child missing in education team’ are informed, who may decide to act. 

6. If at any point during the period of unexplained absence we have any concerns about a child’s safety or well-being, or believe they may be at risk of harm, we will seek advice from social services. 

Regular Attendance Monitoring:

Every half of term our Head of Schools (Carole and Grace) look at attendance patterns of children that are attending nursery less then 85%. We may contact you if we feel we can give you additional support in getting your child to school more frequently.

We understand that when your child starts nursery they will catch  infections/illnesses that are circulating as their immunity systems grow. Please do call us if your child is off Nursery due to being ill.

Working with you:

Please can we stress: Your child’s place will not be removed from you if we know the reason for the absence. We want to work with you to ensure that your child can attend nursery for all of their sessions. We have Barbara Charles (Pastoral and Family Link lead) and Sharon Wood (Federation SENCO) available if you require any support to help with attendance.